The sweet and sour sides of growing up in a Chinese takeaway

Angela Hui was born into a life of service: Chinese takeaway service. Her parents had fled mainland China, where they experienced borderline starvation under the communist regime before arriving as exotic newcomers to provincial South Wales in 1985. There they become part of a Chinese diaspora, financially sustained by dozens of family-run takeaways dotted across the Valleys. The Huis set up in Beddau, a former pit town of 4,000 people that was still struggling socially and economically after the then recent closure of the mines.

They call their restaurant Lucky Star. Hui’s mother is always trying to find ways to invite good fortune but as with most of her other attempts, the choice of name doesn’t prove especially fortuitous: running the takeaway will be almost as hard a life as the coal face had been for their new neighbours.

The takeaway will be Hui’s nursery, playroom and, when she is barely out of infant school, her work station, where she is expected to toil from 5 p.m. until late at night, forgoing a social life and doing whatever homework she has on the counter top.

Her parents and older brothers are either cooking, in a cramped kitchen hot with smoking woks and deep-fat fryers, or out delivering in the Welsh rain.

Angela is front-of-house, as it were, on the physical front line between the Hui’s private home behind her and the public area leading back to the high street outside. She answers the phone – her parents never feel confident in English and rely on her as translator – and warily greets the walk-in punters, many of whom are tipping out of pubs and are consequently drunk.